Chef Donald Link's new cookbook explores recipes 'Down South'

If
chef Donald Link's award-winning "Real Cajun" cookbook is about the food he
grew up with and how it influenced him, his new book, "Down South," is about
his continued evolution and his travels as a cook and chef.

"It's
not your typical cookbook," Link said last week at Herbsaint in his first New
Orleans interview about "Down South: Bourbon, Pork, Gulf Shrimp and Second
Helpings of Everything," ($35). It's the second time he has teamed with Paula
Disbrowe and photographer Chris Granger for Clarkson Potter Publishers. (Full disclosure: Granger is also a NOLA.com/Times-Picayune shooter.) "There
are very few restaurant recipes in there. Most I cook at home. It's really user
friendly. And the recipes feed a lot of people."

"Real
Cajun" was "very grandparent-food kind of oriented," Link said. "This book is
not so overtly traditional. It's not cornbread and green beans. I thought about
that a lot, what to do for this book.

"It's
kind of like Peche Seafood Grill," the restaurant his Link Restaurant Group opened
last spring with chef Ryan Prewitt at the helm. "How do we make this a seafood
restaurant without making it so overtly a New Orleans seafood restaurant?"

The
Peche difference is that fish is cooked over live fire, to obvious success. And
some recipes Link developed for the cookbook wound up on the menu, as well:
Smoked Tuna Dip, for example, which is Smoked Mullet Dip in the cookbook. Either
fish can be used.

The
mullet dip commonly is found in Gulf Coast
restaurants in Alabama and Florida. But Perdido is
just one place where Link found inspiration and Royal Red shrimp, so sweet and savory that he says not
to salt the cooking water.

"I
took a trip to Apalachicola (Fla.), Link said, "where you can see the old,
different style" of regional cooking. "It's a unique pocket of it. We took some
of those dishes, like the smoked tuna dip. Most restaurants have it. In Panama
City, Royal Reds are everywhere.

"When
you go to that certain location, that's what you want to eat, fresh fish.
That's what this is about."

Another exploration: Barbecue. In
Cajun country, Link says, "There's not a lot of old-school barbecue." He was inspired by meeting old pit masters in rural Tennessee
and the Carolinas, traveling to Texas and two trips to Memphis in May.

"I've
learned more about barbecue and smoking in the last few years than I have in my
entire life," he writes in the introduction to the "Cook It Outside" chapter. The
Fatback Collective, a group of notable chefs and pit masters from across the
South, plus their travels to Uruguay to cook over live fire, "had a big impact
on me."

Which
of his travels was most influential? Maybe Uruguay, Link said, but "France, for
the first time, was mind-blowing."

Cooking
with live fire in South America was "so soulful, not precise, but cooking with
heart and soul. The animals, the fire, you have to be one with it and feel it.
All of us there were like, 'This is so moving.'"

He
doesn't care for sweetbreads, Link said, and there, they were cooked in big
chunks on a long, low grill with coals shoveled under them. For two hours.

"Steve
(partner/chef Stryjewski) and I were looking at each other, (thinking) 'It's ruined!' We're
always taught to poach them, don't overcook them. But I will never be able to eat
another sweetbread after those. They had this silky tofu texture in the middle.
They would put them on a cutting board with a little sea salt and lemon. They
were out of this world, shockingly good."

The food of Spain "was another one that I was
really surprised by, how good the food was," Link said. "It's kind of my
style."

Anything
he cooks, he says, will have the characteristics of his style, how he
treats the ingredients, how he layers the seasoning, how slowly he browns the
ingredients, all with flavor profiles that relate to the way his relatives cook.

Food
needs love and attention, Link said, which can be hard to convey in recipes. He
never wrote them regularly until he started writing cookbooks. At Herbsaint, he
said, it was five years before he wrote down recipes.

"When I make gumbo, I sprinkle in the
seasoning, it's not measured, it's all visual. Don't put it all in at once."

When
their private dining venue Calciasieu opened, the cooks started making gumbo
according to the recipe. The seasoning was measured out and they dumped it all
in at once. Link stopped them.

"'Oh
no, don't do that,'" he recalls. "All the love had come out of it."

Link
tested recipes for the cookbook at home, where he cooks for his wife and two kids, and often for little
dinners for friends. Testing recipes in the restaurant, "Everybody's going to cheat. You've got prep cooks, you've
got dishwashers, unlimited supplies.

"I
like cooking at home, having just a small group of people over. It's so easy,
after you're used to cooking for hundreds," Link said. "I tell the cooks here,
'You've got to cook at home.' It makes you think differently about how you
cook. You're going to put more effort into it. They're going to sense that and
bring that here. Would you serve that to dinner guests in your home?"

Before he had kids, Link would spend 12 hours on his day off experimenting with
dishes. Now, he says, he spends a third of that time experimenting, and the rest of
the time making his kids happy. They're ages 7 and 14.

One
of the dishes they love is his Braised Chicken with Olives and Salami. "I'm
into olives," Link added; they show up in several recipes, including Olive
Spread, in a Lamb Shoulder Stew with Lemon and Olives, and in an Olive-Lemon
Vinaigrette.

Writing recipes and the cookbooks is an outlet to think about food in a
different way, Link said.

"I have to get into a creative mode for each
restaurant, independently. If I'm going to work on the food here, I work around
that. For sandwiches (at Cochon Butcher), I have to switch gears. The cookbook
expands that, and I think about other things altogether."

The writing, stories and recipes Link used in his
first cookbook, "Real Cajun," won the 2009 Best New American Cookbook in the James
Beard Awards. It wasn't his first medal from the Oscars of the food
world: Link won the Best Chef: South award in 2007. In 2012, he became one of two local chefs ever
nominated for the most prestigious chef award of all, for Outstanding Chef; Emeril Lagasse was
nominated in 2003.

"Never
in a million years did I see that coming," Link said of the cookbook's win.
"There are tons of cookbooks out there. It makes me feel good to get some
recognition for it.

"I
was happy to write a book."

*

Link
says his kids will eat this every time he makes this dish for them at home. To
save this to your Recipe Box, click here. All recipes and photos are used with permission of Clarkson Potter Publishers.

Braised Chicken with
Salami and Olives

Makes 4 to 6 servings

1 (3-1/2 to 4-pound) chicken, cut into 10 pieces

2-1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

3/4 teaspoon black pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, sliced

5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

1/2 fennel bulb, thinly sliced

1 (8-inch) rosemary branch

1-1/2 cups diced salami

1 cup green olives, cut in half

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1/2 cup dry white wine

2 tablespoons tomato paste

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2-1/4 cups chicken broth

4 bay leaves

Juice
of 1 lemon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over
medium heat and sear chicken in 2 batches until golden brown, about 7
minutes per side. Transfer chicken to a 9- by-13-inch baking dish.

Add onion to
the skillet and cook in the rendered chicken fat, stirring, until brown, about
4 minutes. Add garlic, fennel, rosemary, salami, olives, oregano, and red
pepper flakes. Pour in wine and simmer to reduce, scraping the bottom of
the pan. Add tomato paste and cook 5 minutes. Add flour and cook,
stirring to incorporate, for another 2 minutes.

Pour in chicken broth in batches and stir to incorporate. Bring to a simmer over medium
heat and cook until slightly thickened, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in bay leaves
and lemon juice.

Pour sauce
over the chicken in the baking dish and roast in the oven, basting every 30
minutes, until the chicken is very tender, about 1-1/2 hours. Discard the bay
leaves.

Serve the chicken warm, with plenty of the
sauce.

*

This slaw is a riff on mayo-apple-raisin salads
Link ate as a kid in southwest Louisiana, the chef writes. Lots of Link's
dishes include a hot pepper, but the addition of ginger and cilantro take it in
another direction. He recommends using sweet, crisp apples such as Pink Lady,
Gala, Braeburn or Golden Delicious. To add
this to your Recipe Box, click here.

Gingered Apple Slaw

Makes 4 to 6 servings

4 apples, cored and cut
into matchsticks (about 4 cups)

1/2 cup mayonnaise

Juice 1 lemon

1 tablespoon ginger juice
(see Note)

2 tablespoons chopped
fresh cilantro leaves

1 large jalapeno, stemmed,
seeded, and minced

Kosher salt and black
pepper

2 ounces crispy prosciutto
or country ham (optional; see Note)

2 handfuls of arugula
(optional)

In a medium bowl, use a
rubber spatula to combine the sliced apples with the mayonnaise, lemon juice,
ginger juice, cilantro, and jalapeno; season with salt and pepper to taste. Top
with prosciutto and arugula, if using.

NOTES: If you want to add
crispy prosciutto to the salad, thinly slice the ham and fry it in a couple
tablespoons olive oil until crisp, about 3 minutes. Transfer to a plate lined
with paper towels to drain. Break the ham into small pieces over the salad.

A garlic press makes easy
work of extracting the pungent juice from a section of peeled, fresh ginger.
The ginger juice adds a spicy, fiery kick to vinaigrettes and sauces,
especially creamy dressings that temper its sharpness.

*

Link writes a touching
tribute to Herbsaint's favorite customers and friends, Wayne and Janis McCaw,
who dine there every Saturday. He concludes, "The McGaws, and these hefty,
chewy chocolate chip cookies that Wayne makes with skill and love, are just two
of the reasons I love New Orleans so much."

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking
sheet with parchment paper or foil, shiny-side up.

In the bowl of an
electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter until just
barely soft. Beat in vanilla, sugar, and salt and then mix in the flour
until just incorporated. Using a heavy wooden spatula, stir in nuts and
chocolate.

Use a 1/3 -cup
measuring cup to scoop an even amount for each cookie. Roll each scoop of dough
into a ball. Put the cookies on the prepared sheet and flatten to about 1/2-inch
thick and 3-1/2 inches wide.

Bake, rotating the pan halfway through, until
the cookies are a pale golden color and darker around the edges, 16 to 18
minutes. Allow the cookies to cool, at least slightly, before devouring.